#thought process coherently

[mischievous-thunder]

Take risks, Wade!

[fancygremlin]

Who’s the fire lit for?

In Part 45 we are introduced to Malam, a mysterious character who seems to enact justice for children who die unjustly.

He approaches Arthur, and seems surprised when he discovers that he is the one who lit the fire, as he expected a child to have done so.

I don’t think Malam’s expectations are completely unfounded, as it is not really present Arthur who lit the fire... but the child that went to the Boys' Brigade who did:

I think that Arthur unknowingly lit the fire both for Faroe and himself (or more correctly, his past child self). Malam was not called in by the fire to bring justice to just Faroe, but also to Arthur.

Arthur had been forced to metaphorically kill his child-self and his innocence and forced to grow up too quickly for his own good. His childhood had been cut short so suddenly and brutally by his parent’s death, a grief too big and complicated for a young child to understand and work through.

Even now, on the inside, Arthur is still that wounded and timid child. He is still carrying that pain with him. However, the hostility he had to live throughout his life only granted him more wounds and bruises. The soft, childlike and gentle parts of himself were hardened under layers and layers of scar tissue. Arthur had to learn pretty quickly that it was never safe enough for him to be kind and patient with himself. He was never given the time to process his traumas. No one taught him or showed him the love and care he so desperately needed and cried for so long for.

The hurt was drowned by more hurt and it was never tended to, never really cared for. But it never really disappeared or healed. It always stayed deep within him.

But now (finally), for the first time, Arthur’s most devastating traumas (the loss of his daughter, and the loss of his own innocence) have been recognised.

His childhood cry has been finally answered.

The kid Arthur was can finally rest now that Malam stopped by his fire.

[beaft]

wish it was more socially acceptable to just... stop talking. not forever, just for a while. sorry. no more words today. all used up. don't bother asking me questions because all i will do is stare at you

[tragicvampireromanceisland]

thinking so long and hard about joyness once more…like yesss they are very cute and sweet and all but i think them getting together even after their History is sooo interesting. like, does joy first start hanging out around sadness and talking with her more often out of guilt? is it performative? when does it stop being performative?? and at what point does joy realize it’s stopped being performative? how does joy feel when every single interaction she has with sadness after the events of the first movie are just like…constant reminders of how she screwed up with her prior? liking someone who makes her feel that bad when she normally never lingers on what she's done wrong just seems so counterintuitive (fun fact: joy has literally never genuinely apologized for anything she's done, across both movies. she's acknowledged and fixed her mistakes before, sure, but she has never expressed guilt so straightforwardly like that. is she simply incapable of it? or has she just...never given importance to feeling guilty before so long as she can just Fix her mistake? just something very interesting i've noticed...)!!

like, joy’s canonically admitted that she’s literally tried to kick sadness out of headquarters before. that’s truly how little joy thought of her before she got to know her better…she totally would have been fine with just. never seeing her again. imagine disliking your coworker THAT much since the very first day you met her and now you have feelings for her…?! not a possibility joy ever would have considered, and i think joy would struggle a Lot with coming to terms with that initially. she is the Queen of cognitive dissonance. of being Delusional. it’s HARD to shake off old habits just like that!! joy is someone who very much doesn’t fully acknowledge how she feels until it gets so intense it bubbles up to the surface and breaks through her usual demeanor (we’ve seen that both with how she’s gotten sad and angry before…who’s to say romance would not be the same. i think she’d just keep denying it until she just. has an Ah Shit moment with sadness one day. probably over something completely mundane).

and it certainly doesn’t help that sadness is, well. Sadness! she clearly admires joy from the very beginning even when joy treated her so poorly (knowing her she probably thought she deserved it…sigh). she’d literally just assume absolutely nothing would come out of her feelings. and you know she probably might even romanticize and Enjoy it in a weird way…i mean think about it. she canonically likes sad romance novels…this is her own "tragic romance" (apparently. SUPPOSEDLY) so i think she’d kind of insistently cling to that. define their entire relationship as unrequited and reallyyy lean into it and warp anything that happens otherwise to fit her little Doomed Yuri vision. she's observant as hell for pretty much everything, normally, but she just has goddamn Horse Blinders on for just this one thing specifically.

she’s just completely unaware of how fundamentally she’s changed joy and shattered her entire worldview (meanwhile joy is just busy having a whole crisis about exactly that). and NOW she has to deal with actually being treated like she matters, both by joy and the other emotions?? helloooo? she’s definitely got a lot to process by this point because Her entire way of living has changed too now in an entirely different direction.

AND then you add to that how it's pretty clear that sadness knows joy pretty well, but joy still has a Lot to learn about sadness because she never gave her a chance before...very much a recipe for guilt and confusion and miscommunication and other such weird occurrences to arise.

BASICALLY tldr theyre both kind of idiots and i think their dynamic is a little more complicated than people give it credit for. joyness is a veryyy. She fell first (sadness) she fell harder (joy) type of dynamic. To Me.

[vaguely-concerned]

...the 'almond room' thing in the unwanted guest IS a reference to/play on words on amygdala, right? (amygdala comes from the greek word for almond!) I didn't read that wrong? it is stupid sexy Ianthe coyly inviting Palamedes into a different chamber of her brain, as it were?

(also the pieces of meat -- the feeding or kissing, it's hard to say which of it all -- being present right from the beginning... ianthe DOES know exactly what has happened to her, doesn't she. palamedes is just cutting his way through her layers of denial and repression all merciless and scalpel-like to get her to admit it. or, she knows subconsciously at least -- each person comes in and feeds her something that she's helpless to stop from becoming a part of her even in her coffin, with bloody kisses. oh baby love is feeding me bad meat and I have no choice but to swallow it down. like yeah I suspect that is how human contact can feel when your sense of self and boundaries developed to be a specific kind of Fucked Up lol. that shit could make a person dream of being a diamond in a glass of wine; perfect, inviolable, untouchable, eternally separate and safe. In the words of Andrea Gibson in Prism:

They say the womb is where we learn love is knowing the cord that feeds you could at any moment wrap around your neck

that is quite literally ianthe's first introduction to love -- her sister, a cord around her neck. Corona is Ianthe's other self, a second soul running around outside of her body, and she seems to consider herself as responsible for (and entitled to) the preservation of Corona's soul as her own. the way this mirrors that growing up, Ianthe had to be two necromancers in one body to let them stay together. (twins and ghosts all the way down I guess.) she's still just trying to do the same thing, I think, she's simply put on some bigger boots about it. the central problem of lyctorhood, self vs. connection/love, rears its head once again -- Ianthe existentially wants total self-contained self-sufficiency, perfect control, sovereign sway and masterdom over her soul... but she wants that at the same time as being in uninterrupted (uninterruptible!), eternal and indelible intimacy with her sister, whose soul also cannot be allowed to change. which, you know. freedom and love don't coexist the way you want them to, Ianthe, no matter how clever you are there won't be a way to get what you want. (especially not with a sister whose idea of what love is seems to go more towards being consumed, made one, by whatever violence necessary -- 'she could have taken me'.) man. Ianthe is a spectacular and ongoing piece of work, but sometimes it's hard to see how she could ever have turned out otherwise considering the conditions she was born and raised under haha.

the two-way street of the horror of digestion, whether you're the devourer or the devouree. part of you in me, part of me in you, whether either of us likes it or not we're both changed by this. bad news: you can't get out of interconnectedness by finding the cleverest loophole around it, ianthe. nice try, though)

[timelessbian]

if i had a nickel for every time a sapphic kiss in the mcu ended with the lead of the show incapacitated on the ground i'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened BOTH TIMES

[iridescentis]

the reason why i just silently reblog posts every time they upload is because i am simply stunned into silence every damn time

like what the fuck am i supposed to say to this

[thoughtfulchaos773]

I don't know, there's something so honest here. This is after Carmy says "You love taking care of people" how he looks at her, and she seems so vulnerable. It just reminds me of that special someone who shares your dreams, failures, and doubts and you know it will be safe. They're just so tender with each other.

Anyone that reacts to this scene is always moved by the connection.

It's very sweet and magnetic, isn't it? Syd is so bare to him in his moment and he's just looking at her falling even harder. I don't know, their connection reminds me how much we need each other to get through life, because it's fucking hard and scary sometimes.

[thegreatyin]

well. fuck.

for obvious reasons, today is A Scary Time, and i generally try to keep my blog as a break from All That. however. i cannot stress enough how much you need to cling to hope and live right now.

even if it's impossible. especially if it's impossible. due it for spite, if nothing else. just think of how satisfying it'll be in a few years when the fucker finally kicks the bucket. don't you want to see that? don't you want to tell your grandkids about it, when all is said and done?

we've lived through this bullshit before. we'll live through it again. keep being there for each other. keep being there for yourself. it may not be okay for weeks, or months, or years, but it will eventually be okay.

[diyasgarden]

i'm awful because I finished reading "Betting on Losing Dogs Cats" and just thought about how that cat will die.

I worked at a shelter, so maybe it is just me being practical. It made me so sad.

oh do i have plenty to say on this, but if you're reading this post and haven't read the story yet, go do that first! read here

The concept of "letting go" is nonexistent to Patrick. While there are some situations where this makes him an instigator, most of the time it makes him a yearner.

He yearns for many things, but above all? The potential of his past. All the things he can longer reach. And it's not like he is blind to the fact that these things are out of his grasp, he is just unable to accept it.

It's a cruel cycle, which only serves to hurt him.

So now to the cat....

It's a kitten. It should be young and joyful, but it's already knocking on death's door. Similarly, Patrick should be a world class player, but he's alone and stuck with a failure of a career.

The cat is a mirror to Patrick. Two beings who have lost in life. He sees himself in the dying creature, which is why he feels the need to save it. When the lady at the shelter says it should be put down, he is directly being told to give up. But wouldn't that mean he should give up on himself?

So when he takes the cat with him, he is clinging onto the hope that the cat will survive, because that is the hope he has for himself. Two intertwined beliefs, he cannot untangle. Just like he is betting on the cat, he is betting on himself.

I like that you bring up the idea that the cat may die anyway, because then you have to consider that he may be giving the cat a worse fate. Is he making its death long and slow, when it could've been quick and peaceful?

Now isn't this exactly what he is doing with his career? With his life?

Patrick is the creator of his own demise. Not because he is failing, but because he cannot accept that he is.

It's why towards the end Patrick has to keep telling himself that he did the right thing, because to some extent he knows he isn't. At least not in terms of preservation. But he cannot acknowledge the possibility that the cat may die in any circumstance, because of what that means for him.

I guess really if you think the cat survives, it means you think there is hope for Patrick. And if you don't...well rip unamed kitten and Patrick Zweig's career

Although, that being said, I do love the idea of the kitten and Patrick just traveling together...so maybe just ignore this and we can all choose peace and happiness. #patrickzweigismyfavoritecatdad

[chimerafeathers]

there's an essay jumbled up in my brain about dunmeshi's beginning and how clever and deceptive it is as a sleight-of-hand trick that distracts the audience from the depth and scope of the worldbuilding and foreshadowing that's being set up the entire time by dangling zany characters and wacky dishes and biology fun facts in front of us, and how that serves to catch invested viewers off guard when those elements come to the forefront, but also how it works against it with other viewers wanting "more" and not seeing it because the plot bait isn't laid out up front

how people getting frustrated with the characters "not taking things seriously" is mirrored and refuted in the confrontation between Laios and Shuro. how the characters' attitudes aren't just a result of shallow low-stakes "comedy rules" where nothing matters, but are an extension of their personalities (Laios's nonstandard expression of emotions being offputting even to people he knows) and the world and social environment (adventurers being desensitized to death and injury because resurrection magic is commonplace). the way the party refers to "saving Falin" instead of "retrieving Falin's corpse," indicating that they still see her with full personhood, and how that phrasing leads to some readers/viewers believing that Falin is alive in the dragon's stomach, conscious of being slowly digested while the party carelessly fucks around "wasting time." how the weird tonal dissonance makes sense in-universe and yet is deliberately challenged more and more the deeper the party goes

all the character building and pieces of lore slowly weaving together the shape of the larger world, laying the groundwork for the major themes that will surface later. so much is right there in the "low-stakes" early episodes if you know what you're looking for (or pass the perception checks).

it can be so satisfying to see new viewers/readers pick up on the clues even in the earliest "simple" episodes, or notice new things and make connections yourself....and it can also be frustrating to see people dismiss oddities and dissonance as shallow or bad writing because they don't expect a "cooking anime" to have depth like that. why try to question and understand and peel back the layers when you don't expect there to be any layers?

why can't laios take things seriously for once?

[mossrockpog]

Q!forever and q!bbh make me so sadddd. Q!Forever just wants to help but it's not working.... and bbh is slowly becoming more and more self isolated even though he's surrounded by people. And this latest move where forever mightve just ruined his chances to get bad to listen to him because he (like most of the island) is not willing to cross the same lines bbh is.... oughh.... they all love their kids so much and they all love each other so much but they are so hurt right now that things are corroding..... ouwaghhhhh

[1singulargrape]

Sukuna called Yuuji by his full name

Sukuna called. Yuuji by. His full name.

Sukuna??? Called yuuji by??? His full name?!?!!

[jacksoldsideblog]

just randomly floored again by how good fight club is. thinking about the scene where the narrator is desperately tracking tyler across the country. both the book and movie do it perfectly, though in different ways. the movie is very intentional, there's a sense Tyler is playing with him, the narrator is desperate and his only goal is to track down Tyler. i do love the added Tyler was setting up franchises line. but also, it's interesting to think about how it wouldn't work in the book because the tone of all of it is different.

in the book, he's actually still working. it's after he — he alone — takes the sacrifice of hessel, and has 12 licenses in his pocket, he's searching for Tyler not out of suspicion but because Tyler dumped him and he wants to find him. in the book the narrator is much more on board. during his search there's a sense that he's starting to realize, doesn't want to realize, and then the bartender spills it all and he hates it. he hates it because it means Tyler isn't real. and when Tyler establishes the new status quo, there's a distinct sense that the part the narrator hates the most is simply that Tyler isn't real. yes, all the project mayhem is horrifying he guesses, but that pales in comparison to the fact that Tyler isn't real and he can't unlearn that. And Tyler says he won't disappear, but he won't see him either, and that's when the narrator gets all pissy.

[tswwwit]

What are some ideas you have floating around that you don't have any plans on writing but like to entertain as a thought?

Many of them, in fact! Though they sort of vanish from my memory if I don't make a record of them, here's a few ones I jotted down when they came to mind.

For a domestic one: Bill thought he'd hate a lot of being married! Even though he loves Dipper, he thought he'd rebel against the chains of domesticity - and in some ways he still does - but one major benefit he's found is not having to be 'on' all the time.

No need to be perfectly performing all the time! No shoving around for social influence, no intimidation, or clever tricks. No commanding attention or taking up the room. Hell, there's surprisingly little upkeep! Bill can undo his tie and pick his nose and bitch about his day to someone who isn't bending over backwards to agree with him on everything. Someone who doesn't give him a weird look and sneer if he, god forbid, actually wants to sit down, read a book, drop the grin for an hour or two.

The concept in question is Bill's very first moment of great surprise. That when he isn't being the most charming, terrifying, and exciting guy in the universe, and just chilling out for like, five minutes, Dipper comes over and snuggles up to him on the couch, or wraps his arms around his shoulders and kisses the top of his head. And when Bill asks 'what was that for?', Dipper shrugs and goes 'eh, just felt like it'. It's both baffling and extremely compelling.

A short where Reincarnated Dip is Definitely Sure he's Not Gay!!! Especially not for this Hot Demon Man who is getting so close and touchy with him with his big smile and horrible wiles. Yep. Just keeping an eye on him to make sure he's not up to something Nefarious ™.

A discussion between Dipper and Bill where Dipper insists that Bill should understand this, or not do that, because, like. Y'know, Bill's a guy! There are guy things! Making Bill stare at Dipper like he's an idiot. He proceeds to informs Dipper how that's stupid for multiple reasons! First, that Bill's Not Human to begin with, his gender can't be put into a little box! And frankly, he never filled out the paperwork for his original one, come to think of it. Sure, he/him's fine, but c'mon, sapling, thinking of the whole shebang like a binary is dumb as hell. Now Dipper has to do some mental readjustment re: his own issues with masculinity/gender.

[spookyaveragecatdoodlesenjoyer]

genuinely can't tell the difference between what was two days ago and what was two weeks ago is this bad